2024: A Banner Year for the Horror of Feminine Rage
Make the stake thick, the bonds
stiff on my innocent wrists.
Burn me the same way
you burned her: do it
because we took the plain
thoughts from our own heads
into the square, and spoke.From "How to Burn a Woman" by Claire Askew
It’s been some year, hasn’t it? I recently saw someone invoking the universe, beseeching it to allow us one year without unprecedented events. I can relate. A break from events would be nice, though unlikely to be forthcoming. History is a catalog of events, and they don’t seem to ever stop.
Of course, it' s always hard to tell from so close a vantage point, but I think history will reflect on 2024 as quite a good year for the horror film, if not a great year. As much as I love the genre, it's a little worrying when the year in horror is too good though. In 1978, film critic Robin Wood wrote in Film Comment magazine that movies are “… the personal dreams of their makers and the collective dreams of their audiences - a fusion made possible by the shared structure of common ideology.” Often, a good year for horror has meant there’s something hanging over the culture, something we’re wrestling with, some big issues are bubbling up to the surface, occupying the consciousness and sub-consciousness of the population so thoroughly, they’re seeping into the work of the people writing, directing and producing horror, and the audience is responding to the reflection, and therefore recognition, of their fears.
At the end of each year, I’ve felt compelled to write something, to mark the passage of time, as arbitrary as a calendar year is. My feeling about end of the year “Best Of…” lists is that they are a good to help shine a light on things readers may not have been aware of, and I don’t think I’d be adding anything you couldn’t find by reading five or ten others. Still, as I thought about the passing year, a theme started to emerge.
Feminine rage.
2024 may be the single best year on record for feminine rage in horror, in aggregate. I can’t think of another year to have so many films connected to feminine rage, and also be among the films that have driven so much conversation related to horror on screen. It's likely someone will come along and prove me wrong, that it's not the best year, but I don't think it can be argued that it wasn't a damn good year either. Audiences members may not have liked all of them, but the variety and number released this year meant they were likely to enjoy at least one, and in many cases, a number of them.
I’m not saying this is shocking, considering the context in which these films were being created and released. The US just re-elected a man who has been adjudicated a rapist, whose public pronouncements about women have been clearly sexist and whose first campaign involved the revelation of an audio recording of him bragging about grabbing women by the pussy. “When you’re famous, they’ll let you.” Since the results of the election were confirmed, he’s announced the intention to appoint a string of men with histories of sexual predation to some of the most powerful positions in government. We’ve learned there’s a very good chance Diddy somehow escaped the wave that was #MeToo, and in the interim has continued a shocking pattern of violence and sexual abuse, with women and men being his victims. Neil Gaiman somehow escaped the tide of #MeToo as well, with allegations related to his abuse of his celebrity becoming public recently, made particularly galling by the degree he's added to his status and celebrity cache for his statements in support of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, and against behavior very much like the accusations now leveled against him.
On top of this, major news outlets printed columns proclaiming the result of the election a response, a backlash, to #MeToo. While there’s some degree of truth to this, it’s also a facile and incomplete truth, but it’s really easy to blame women, and let’s face it, our press and the majority of our “smart, serious and responsible” people have been letting us down in a serial manner for quiet some time. When it comes to anything resembling real thinking about the major issues of our day, there are very few bright spots or genuinely big brains in our news media. What this particular cadre ignores, in favor of blaming women, is the xenophobia and bald faced lies about economics which also featured in the campaign. It's the choice to lay the responsibility for what’s sure to be one of the most chaotic and destructive eras in US history at the feet of women expressing a desire to not have their abuse blithely ignored by the society they exist in, and press to see those responsible face some accountability.
It takes at least a year, usually a few, for a film to go from script to screen (in one or two cases, the films that I’m writing about began their journey to the screen as long as seven years ago). None of these filmmakers, as far as anyone knows, has the ability to see the future, but the years prior to 2024 laid the groundwork for a banner year in feminine rage horror. Women have been expressing their experiences in a patriarchal, sexist and misogynist culture and their expression has been treated as unworthy of concrete action for decades, so there's been plenty of time for this crop of feminine rage films to germinate. No amount of research supporting their claims has been enough to create a sustained, pro-active, collective effort to address them. Nothing really does seem to be enough. Now, 2024 is the year that justified rage is boiling over onto screens in an unusual concentration, and horror being the genre most comfortable with all things that make us uncomfortable, it’s the genre most equipped to handle it.
With as many films fitting the description being released this year, feminine rage covers a fairly wide range, and but there are trends. Fittingly, the most prominent are related to bodily autonomy. We’re living in the aftermath of Roe vs. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court, and it seems every few days a new example of women being subjected to pain, horror or even death as a result, is being published by local news or investigative outlets like ProPublica. Artists, celebrity and fame were central to a number of them too. The headlines in 2024 had no shortage of women talking about their experiences as women and artists with sexism, misogyny and the unhealthy relationship between the public and celebrity.
This year Chappell Roan achieved what was possibly the brightest, most meteoric rise in pop music in a few decades. Within a short time, she went from being dropped from a record label that didn’t know what to do with her, to being ever present across the music landscape, having her pick of labels that wanted to distribute her album, which became one of the year's biggest hits, and the most talked about new artist of 2024. After a few months in this incredibly intense spotlight, Roan took to social media to inform the members of her newfound fandom who needed to hear it, that being a celebrity doesn’t change the fact that she is indeed a human being. She laid out some boundaries and called attention to what we’ve come to accept as normal and “part of the job” in relation to celebrity. This behavior extended to people who didn’t sign up for that job either, as both her childhood home where her parents still lived and her sister’s home had been “visited” by fans too.
There was, of course, the variety of response which amounts to, “Shut up and sing,” but there was also an outpouring of support, not just from fandom, but from celebrities, both new and veteran, who applauded Roan and expressed their own experiences with celebrity. A string of other female musicians and actors publicly supported Roan by talking about their experiences with both fans and the press that have undermined their safety and mental health. Daniel Craig applauded her, relating what she’d said to his experience being James Bond, as well as The Cure’s Robert Smith.
As I was just beginning to write this piece, news broke of Blake Lively filing a lawsuit over the filming and subsequent press related to It Ends With Us, detailing sexual harassment on the set, as well as a concerted, organized public relations campaign to smear her reputation as an attempt to undermine or prevent allegations about director Justin Baldoni's on set behavior. It’s not a shock to anyone who follows any entertainment focused media that the PR firm which organized and perpetuated the campaign against Lively is the same one Johnny Depp engaged as he took on a lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard, when she went public with claims of being abused by him emotionally and physically. Abigail Breslin and Kate Beckinsale have now come out, detailing their own stories of horrific on set experiences.
As Lively’s lawsuit took over the attention economy, it was simultaneously (but so much more quietly) reported Marilyn Manson dropped the lawsuit he’d brought against Evan Rachel Wood for claims of abuse she’s made related to their relationship. Mason agreed to pay all the legal expenses related to it, including Wood's. When high profile lawsuits involving celebrities end with the suit being dropped, and one party agreeing to pay all related legal fees, the press usually has a lot to say about it. It's almost comical how little attention this has gotten in comparison to the amount of attention Manson filing the suit got.
Celebrity and the way misogyny and sexism are intertwined within it, as well as the industries it touches, were at the center of a few of the year’s most talked about films. Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore film, The Substance, gave Demi Moore the chance to shine as Elizabeth Sparkle, who on her fiftieth birthday finds out she has aged out of what the male dominated entertainment industry sees as useful or viable. She’s offered the clandestine opportunity to try a new drug, The Substance, which creates a younger self she can inhabit for a week at a time. Not just a younger self, but the best version of a younger self. What transpires is a film of howling, snarling feminine rage, about standards of body image, the obsession with youth, the casual (and not so casual) misogyny of the entertainment industry, and the cost of celebrity to a woman’s sense of self and mental health, that is one of the most memorable examples of effective body horror in some time.
It’s ironic that given the world into which the film was released, its subject matter having been among the focuses of feminist study for decades now, the most common criticism has been that it’s uninterested in nuance. It's a great horror film, that treats its serious subject matter seriously, and understands it can also be fun and cathartic in ways only ha horror film can be. Despite being a relatively intimate story, it feels big in scope, is full of bold beautiful color, visual style, a wry variety of knowing humor and is unapologetically, gleefully in your face. Qualley and Moore’s performances swing between the deadly seriousness of the subject matter, and a caustic, dead pan humor. There are some shocking, “WTF?” moments throughout the film and it culminates in an ending which is equal parts masterwork of practical effects, achieving that particular magic that is gory technical beauty, and is bleakly hilarious. It’s not a film trying to seduce the viewer into engaging with it’s subject matter. It has no interest in convincing anyone of the relevance of it's perspective. You are on board with the conceit and subject matter or you’re not, and that is one of the reasons it works so well. The Substance such a great experience it is a sledgehammer, and not a soft, caressing, flirtation or appeal to the audience intellectual vanity. It’s one hell of a swing, with the impact to match. As Alex West put it, in discussing the film with her cohost Andrea Subisatti on the Faculty of Horror podcast, “If nuance worked, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
Smile 2 also delved into aspects and issues of celebrity. It puts Naomi Scott into the role of a young pop star, attempting to return to a career she put on hold after a period of drug addiction and the spiral which often accompanies it, that culminated in the death of her actor boyfriend in a car accident. Her own recovery from the accident and a stint in rehab have had her out of the spotlight for a year. We first encounter Sky Riley (Scott) as she’s announcing her return to touring and making a public apology, a very familiar scene, on a talk show. Avoiding spoilers, it’s not long before Skye comes into contact with the entity responsible for the events of the first film. The inclusion of aspects of celebrity make Smile 2 superior to its predecessor, which was one of the surprise hits of 2022.
Writer/director Parker Finn weaves the alienation and isolation of celebrity through the events of the film (some of which are particular to women and celebrity), and also manages to evoke the experience of attempting to navigate a high pressure environment when past struggles with mental health are known to everyone involved. Two of the films most memorable sequences grow from our current, not so healthy relationship to celebrity and fandom. One of the others evokes the anxiety grown from the pressure of being The Face of something like a major pop tour in today’s world. Hundreds of careers and jobs depend on the person at the center, and their ability to shoulder a workload that makes anything like a connection to a more grounded life nearly impossible. Add misogyny and sexism, in all of the industries surrounding or related to celebrity, and this cocktail becomes even more potent.
Smile 2 is as effective as it is because it uses the conceit of the franchise to take the audience on a journey replicating the emotional terrain of being under the intense spotlight of celebrity, and being what is essentially a cottage industry unto ones self, while not being okay, and having everyone around you know that you've struggled with mental health issues previously. Finn’s ability to craft a dread inducing atmosphere, along with his ability to build a scare were clear in the first film, but here he shows he also has the ability to craft all of this as connecting to character, deepening the audience investment in the character and story. Skye Riley isn't a saint, but Naomi Scott makes her feel real, and the way the Smile Entity/Demon uses the way her life and career are intertwined is built on the stories of the many young women pop stardom has nearly or completely destroyed. In a way, the culmination of the story feels like a confrontation with the public appetite for watching celebrities, especially those that are young, attractive and female, be consumed by the almost inherently destructive nature of this kind of celebrity. Smile 2 manages to do all of this, as well as be an intense, dread and anxiety inducing ride. Having seen this a little later in the year, I couldn't help but think of Chappel Roan's comments as I watched, along with the saga of Britney Spears conservatorship.
Among the other examples of horror films entwining with celebrity and feminine rage this year, is the recent controversy focusing on Sidney Sweeney and her bikini. A tabloid published photos of Sweeney lounging in a bikini around the pool of her California home, obtained by a photographer without her consent. Sweeney has become one of the fastest rising stars in her generation. She’s a talented, compelling young actor, who also happens to have raw, incandescent sex appeal, and is in the position of being the kind of one woman cottage industry Smile 2 so deftly demonstrates the pressures of being. She’s been public about the fact that because of the toll her career has taken on her family (Sweeney began acting professionally as a child), she’s now financially supporting them, and she is not shy about using her growing celebrity to cobble together a long list of sponsorships and marketing partnerships. Kelsey McKinney detailed why Sweeney’s Instagram is never missing content (as compared to other celebrities who've come from wealthy backgrounds), what the precarity of fame represents for a young woman in her position.
I don’t say this to infer any negative connotation or judgment. My personal opinion (if it even matters) is that it’s hypocritical to attach any sense of negativity to the idea of women monetizing the fact that other people find them attractive. Sweeney’s a good actress and producer, showing the kind of promise in talent and choice in projects that suggests she could have a long career of interesting work in her future. Those choices are what make her interesting, including but not only, her choice to embrace her sex appeal. Margot Robbie has managed to take the combination of her talent in front of the camera, the degree to which the public and the industry of celebrity want to make her a sex symbol, with an incisive sense of the business of filmmaking, and make herself into one of the most powerful people in Hollywood today. Right now, Robbie can get just about anything she wants made. That Sweeney seems to have some desire to follow a similar path, and is positioning herself well to do so. The possibility for the creative work arising from this combination of factors is far more interesting than, “Sidney Sweeney’s hot.”
I mention all of this, because it means there is a preponderance of existing photographic material making use of the fact that Sweeney is as close to a sex symbol her generation has today, and this is part of the attack on her following the tabloid releasing photos of her. There has been a vocal portion of the men expressing disappointment and disapproval, in large part because they feel these tabloid photos reveal that Sweeney isn’t the ultimate funnel into which they can pour their sense of desire, lust and need to objectify women.
They don’t seem to understand the difference between a photoshoot or Instagram post that is meticulously staged to evoke a particular response in the viewer, and a candid photo of a woman, relaxing on her own property, being photographed without her knowledge or consent. They're expressing a sentiment that amounts to being angry that Sweeney has conned them. It’s as if the constructed fantasy of Sidney Sweeney’s physical appearance is something they’re owed or as if they are owed the representation and presentation of her appearance that they want. There’s no recognition or sense of rage directed at the people who are taking photos of her, on her own property, without her consent. That's just business as usual or "part of the job" for anyone who achieves enough celebrity cache, right? Instead, they're expressing anger at Sweeney. At base, what they're saying is her body is not hers to present how she wants, when she wants, for the purposes she wants. They want only the presentation that speaks to her being a fantasy object, that she may exist separate from that, is somehow both hard for them to understand, and infuriating.
This angry response is a rebellion against any reminder that a reality exists separate from their fantasy. It’s a rage against the intrusion of reality on fantasy, no different from the attempts to remove any accurate acknowledgment of racism as a defining factor in US history or the existence of LGBTQ+ people from school curriculums and libraries or the constant, drone like thrumming of “woke” as a slur, including where representation of marginalized identities in film and television are concerned. It is an audience who wants their fantasy, and only their fantasy presented, and any intrusion on it by reality or the fantasies of those they see as Other as an existential threat to their existence. It is also the implicit assertion that theirs is the only fantasy that matters, which when one considers how central to human existence fantasy is, is a demonstration of the most profound ignorance and entitlement.
The additional irony, what makes this a bit of tragic comedy, lies not only in the fact that women have been addressing this subject for decades, as well as playing out every level of court proceeding and state legislatures, but Sweeney produced and starred in a film that was a scathing, fiery expression of rage against the sense of entitlement to a woman’s body, this year. She spent seven years shepherding the project to fruition, because it was a part she wanted to play, in a film she wanted to see exist. It was released before this controversy kicked off, and yet, no one has seemed to connect the two.
Immaculate has Sweeney starring as a young novitiate who arrives at a convent where she is scheduled take her vows to become a nun. What follows is a combination of high concept arthouse horror, mixed with a slight dash of the exploitation films centering nuns in the grind house era. It’s tense, well shot, and Sweeney and her costars give great performances. That it took seven years to make ended up meaning it was released right on time. It’s very much a film about an institution with men in the most powerful positions, who believe they are entitled to the bodies of that institutions female members, and most specifically, entitled to force them into and through pregnancy for its aims. Immaculate was rewritten to include the ending in now has, after a major studio backed out of financing and producing it. No major studio would have financed this film, and it was ultimately served by being made independently. As I’ve said elsewhere, the ending of this film may be the most direct, angriest “Fuck you,” to anti-abortion activists and their political henchmen that has ever been committed to film.
In the last few years, the phrase “post birth abortion” has come into the political lexicon, one of the more incredibly stupid, in an era where no ceiling on incredibly stupid seems to exist, and Immaculate gives the audience a “post birth abortion” that is impossible not to see as justified and worth cheering for. It’s a jaw dropper, in more than one way. Sweeney takes the chance to show how fearless and dedicated a performer she is, and is impossible to look away from in her portrayal of the character, and this movement in the film. I was shocked into silence by Sweeney, and then into applause for the fact that the film was made with this ending, given promotion that reveled in what the film is, and distributed to theaters nationally. When I say I’m interested to see where Sweeney’s career as an actor and producer is headed, it’s because of the roles she’s chosen so far, and not only fought for this movie to get made, but then starred in it to boot. It’s hard to imagine most of the other young women in Hollywood, who are in or near Sweeney’s position deciding to play this role, much less produce it, because they so badly want to see this movie made.
There is a tragic irony that this movie was released earlier this year to success and decent critical response, but somehow in the controversy over her poolside photos, no one seemed to consider it was just months after the release of a film putting so fine a point on the sense of entitlement to women’s bodies, specifically in the form of Sweeney's body.
Immaculate wasn’t the only film to make the connection between Christianity and entitlement to a woman's body and spirit. Less a film depicting feminine rage, and more a film showing it's roots using a very similar metaphor, Arkasha Stevenson delivered one of the year’s most audacious directorial debuts with The First Omen.
When it was initially announced, it elicited a collective groan (“Do we really need another Omen film?”), but Stevenson (along with her co-writers Keith Thomas and Tim Smith) delivered something that is in another universe from the often empty, brainless cash grab of sequels, remakes or reboots, in terms of creative quality. The First Omen is dread inducing, featuring a blistering performance by Nell Tiger Free. Finding out later that Stevenson comes from a background in photo-journalism made clear why the film is full of some the years most memorable imagery. There isn’t a period of more than ten minutes that passes without The First Omen presenting an image so meticulously composed, it would be as at home hung on a gallery or living room wall.
Stevenson’s eye for images that burn into the viewers consciousness isn’t all it has going for it either. She has a superb understanding of developing suspense, and structuring a scene to give it the most impact. It also manages to be its own film, with it’s connection to the rest of the Omen franchise being akin to a light dusting of spice, as opposed to a main ingredient. It's exciting to see a film with this discipline, commitment and execution of vision came from someone directing their first feature.
The First Omen, like Immaculate, centers on a young nun and the sense of entitlement the Church has toward her, including but not limited to her body. As close as they are thematically, the difference in approach is substantial. The First Omen is more interested in being a chronicle of the experience, and less interested in giving expression to the rage it evokes. The rage is reflected in the need to tell the story, and even more so in its relevance.
Apartment 7A, a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby, treads into very similar territory as its predecessor. Instead of the focusing on the Catholic Church like Immaculate and The First Omen do, Apartment 7A is using Satanism as a tool to demonstrate the sense of entitlement a woman's body by the wealthy, in relation to class. It isn’t just drawing on the cultural entitlement though. It also mixes some of the same questions and ideas about artistry, show business and celebrity that The Substance, Smile 2 and a few of this years other films are interested in. Julia Garner and Dianne Weist are quite good, but it lacks the punch of its predecessor and the other films taking these themes on this year. It's worth mentioning here primarily because it is another high profile horror film, centered very much in feminine rage.
One of this year’s other great directorial debuts, situates itself between The Substance, Smile 2, Apartment 7A, Immaculate and The First Omen thematically. It deals with wealth, the celebrity it brings, and the sense of entitlement to women’s bodies in a very different way. Like The Substance, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that one of it’s creators is the daughter of a celebrity.
Zoe Kravitz name was known in the world of celebrity before she ever stepped foot on the set for a film or television series. Being the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz, as well as the stepdaughter of Jason Momoa, some level of recognition by the celebrity press has been inevitable since the day she was born. All three of her celebrity parents have also been subject to no shortage of public lust. That Zoe has demonstrated her abilities as an actor, and now a writer/director with a unique vision, was not inevitable. Her debut as a feature director and cowriter, Blink Twice, is stylistically audacious, as well as a bitingly funny, rage fueled journey into the traumatic experiences of young women at the hands of men whose wealth, celebrity and status has put them beyond accountability. One of the film’s strengths is it’s understanding of multiple, simultaneous perspective, and it’s hard not to look at the film as being a product of Kravitz perspective, having grown up in and around the world of celebrity, while like her mother before her, being a young woman whose physical appearance has been the focus of so much attention.
Blink Twice follows Naomi Ackie playing Frida, a young woman in a position too many young people find themselves, trying to find or create as many sources of income as possible, just to survive. One of those gigs is as waitstaff for an event venue or caterer. It’s there, with her roommate and best friend (played by the always excellent Alia Shawkat), she has a chance meeting with Slater King (Channing Tatum), a celebrity tech billionaire of the variety today’s news and social media are saturated with. As a result of this chance meeting, King offers the two the opportunity to join him and a select group of friends on the private island he’s purchased as his therapeutic hideaway. This island is part of what he’s portraying as having made him a new man. The film opens with Frida watching clips of an apology tour King has been conducting, though we never find out exactly what the apology is for, he talks about the island being helpful in that rehabilitation, somehow.
It’s Kravitz ability to understand the perspective of the characters and the audience perspective on those characters that gives Blink Twice it’s bite. Throughout the film, we are so closely associated with Frida’s perspective, we're forced to overcome our own. Kravitz understands how we as an audience are going to see King and his cadre, but because we’re so closely in Frida’s perspective, we’re swept along into the events, waiting for those feelings to be confirmed. It's not that what we're seeing that is creating the tension and conflict. It's tension grown from what we've seen for years now when it comes to hedonism in men this wealthy, and yet wanting to see Frida get the chance to experience some genuine leisure, relaxation and whatever hedonism she may choose.
It’s not a film interested in the minutia of “lore” and what passes for “world building” in the age of an audience and critical community swimming in the obsessions of fandom and the neuroses resulting from characterizing plot and story as the same thing. There’s a degree of wisdom in the way Blink Twice deals with traumatic experiences like those it portrays, and the way it positions them narratively, that is rare in films attempting to take on content like this. Kravtiz has a clear grasp that it’s not something that language can’t convey the immensity of. There’s also a clear understanding that simply depicting them on screen in the most graphic manner, as an attempt to shock or put the viewer through some kind of attrition as a way to inspire understanding or sympathy, isn’t sufficient either. She uses the medium to cause the audience to experience them all at once. There is memory of the past. There is the present. The two violently inhabiting each other as experience. It also speaks directly to the way economic inequality creates and increases the likelihood of secondary opportunities for exploitation. It's also hard to conceive Kravitz cast a Black woman in the lead role without understanding how that effects the dynamics within the story.
In approaching the characters, story and themes the way it does, Blink Twice makes clear attempts to pull these into separate subjects (as so many other films attempt to) are doomed. It points to part of why our conversations about these examples of exploitation and our attempts to rectify these problems have been so unsuccessful. It also expresses the paradox of the built in need of human beings (as well as the social and economic pressures) to forget traumatic experiences in navigating modern life, and conflict it creates with the necessity of remembering them as a means of survival, something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film try to take on at all, much less this successfully.
Blink Twice comes to a conclusion which has inspired discussions related to wealth, gender and exploitation, and about the difference between justice and accountability. Whatever the criticisms, it’s a film worth grappling with, in terms of its themes and ideas, as well as it being the announcement of a talented writer/director whose future work should be anticipated.
Celebrity, cinema, sex and gender have been at the center of Ti West’s X trilogy since X was released in 2022. This year, we got Maxxxine, following the titular heroine Maxine to close the trilogy. X concludes with Maxine driving off of a farm where a very Texas Chain Saw Massacre like massacre has taken place, doled out by the elderly inhabitants of the farm and their victims in the process of fighting back. The victims being a small film crew making porn, dreaming it will catapult them to fame, wealth and success. Maxxxine picks up later, after the title character has established herself in the adult entertainment industry, and is attempting to make the jump to mainstream film. Where X was in the tradition of the seventies slasher, and it’s prequel, Pearl was intent on evoking the imagery and sense of fantasy of the classic Hollywood musical, Maxxxine is pulled from the stitching of eighties neo-noir and the Italian giallo that influenced the birth of both the slasher, and so much of the style of eighties cinema more generally. This is also the trilogy which helped elevate Mia Goth into the status of modern Scream Queen, as she’s played both Maxine and Pearl, in all three films. Her performance as Pearl gave audiences a new appreciation for abilities to carry a film, and as a dramatic performer.
All three of the X films center on normative gender roles coming into conflict with a female characters autonomy as it relates to sex and/or ambition, in the form of a desire to achieve celebrity. In Maxxxine, we are in morally ambiguous territory from the start. Returning audiences know Maxine drove off from the scene of multiple murders (her friends and boyfriend being the victims) without alerting or in any way dealing with police or authorities, and it’s clear quickly she hasn’t been connected back to that scene at the start of the Maxxxine. “I will not accept a life I do not deserve,” has been Maxine’s mantra since the first time we saw her in X, and it’s still her North Star when we catch up with her in Maxxxine.
The backdrop for Maxxxine is early eighties LA, during the period of the Nightstalker murders playing as a combination of tabloid fodder and threat hanging over everything. The murders are a new addition to the mundane violence the female characters in Maxxxine’s world are under threat from daily. The film also invokes the boundaries between the various industries related to sex work, pornography, and mainstream Hollywood. When the film starts, we learn quickly that Maxine has made a living in pornography and sex work more generally, and this is a problem when it comes to breaking into more mainstream fare. Maxine is determined to make the jump, because a life of fame and fortune is the only life she deserves.
Maxxxine is also being about autonomy of body and spirit, though it's less direct. Like the noir and giallo genres that influenced it, Maxxxine is a film with very few characters that would be considered “good.” There are no doe eyed innocents here. Everyone in this world is morally tainted, and the most corrupt and hypocritical end up being the ones whose public image is most closely related with moral righteousness. More or less everything in the film hinges on who it is that gets to profit off of Maxine, how, and whether or not they treat her as a human being with self interest, wants, and needs. That it’s conclusion is related to other forms of celebrity we usually see and treat as separate from entertainment and showbiz is an interesting way of expanding the conversation about the kind of cut throat exploitation and self interest so often associated with Hollywood and entertainment. It presents an interesting opposing pole to the good natured pornographers of the first film, who treated the whole endeavor as a team effort, where everyone was meant to gain.
Maxxxine intertwines these disparate forms of celebrity and recognizes exploitation as a characteristic of celebrity more broadly. In the end, celebrity, of many different kinds, is just a machine built with the bodies of women, then lubricated with the suffering and blood of women. The only real question is whether or not those women can wrench any reward or profit from the process. In the world of Maxxxine, it’s all corrupt and based in crass, insatiable exploitation. If there’s any form of “purity” in the film, it’s in Maxine’s straightforward approach to this. She is the only character in the film that isn’t deceiving anyone around her about her ambitions. There’s poetic irony, but no real victory, like any good noir. The best that can be done in the world of the film, is to make exploitation work for you, not against you. Maxine is a creature of pure ambition, and in her quest to achieve the life she feels she deserves, there isn't anything she isn't willing to exploit.
Another film dealing with autonomy of both women's bodies and religious zealotry is Azrael. It mixes action, suspense and horror, driven by another great leading performance by Samara Weaving. Weaving, like Mia Goth, is one of the foremost in the new generation of horror’s Scream Queens. Set in a post apocalyptic world, the film follows Weaving as Azrael, as she attempts to evade and then destroy a religious cult that renders its members mute, that she was formerly a member of. Given a lead role without any dialog, Weaving’s strength as a physical actor becomes unmistakable. The cult isn’t the only threat she faces, as the landscape is also full of humanoid creatures that have a taste for human flesh.
This is another of this years films that is visually beautiful. The majority of the film takes place in a forest, and during the day, the deep greens and warm golden sunlight are gorgeous. The night scenes use candlelight and firelight as the common sources of light to create beautiful, high contrast imagery, with warm glowing light, and deep, rich blacks. Crucially, it never feels underlit either. The quality and forethought of the cinematography give Azrael a rich, earthy, organic feeling.
Weaving’s Azrael is a character whose rage in response to the oppression of zealots ends up being their undoing. Even as there’s a sense of catharsis for the character, there’s another aspect to the ending that ends up leaving us, as the audience, in far more ambiguous territory. From its opening few minutes to the banger ending, Azrael is about the lengths zealots will go to enforce their beliefs on others, and cycles of rage they create in response. Their belief system tells them they are entitled to Azrael, and basically anyone else they come across, in body and spirit. The shocker of an ending manages to be extremely bleak, yet somehow satisfying in where it leaves the character, while treating cult thinking as dangerously short sighted.
Even this years comedies, creating an amalgamation of horror, comedy and romance got into utilizing feminine rage. Lisa Frankenstein is about a young woman whose rage is centered in being treated as a disruption in the new family created by her father’s second marriage, as she’s navigating the process of grieving her mother’s death. Katherine Newton is captivating and entertaining as she emerges from the depths of her grief by embracing a decidedly gothic, murderous new outlook and a new acquaintance that happens to be undead. Written by Diablo Cody of Juno and Jennifer’s Body fame, it adopts the archetypes and rhythms of an eighties teen comedy, while flirting with horror genre tropes, but the protagonist here isn’t the put upon (but meant to be charming) young male most eighties teen comedies centered on, it’s the literate, intelligent, but quiet Lisa. Cody and director Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin Williams) avoid the pitfalls of those eighties teen comedies by developing more complicated, nuanced characters.
At the start, Lisa’s primary transgression against the norms of the middle class fantasy her new stepmother is imprisoned by (played by the under appreciated Carla Gugino), is to be quiet and not enthusiastic about that fantasy. Lisa isn’t acting as a stereotypically sarcastic, caustic teen. She’s not acting out in some performative, destructive way. Whether or not one appreciates the film as a whole, it’s an interesting entry in feminine rage films because it does deal with the degree to which a young woman isn’t entitled to her own interior life in this suburban, middle class fantasy her stepmother obsesses over. By using the eighties as its time period, Lisa Frankenstein asks questions about demands of conformity put on young women in the middle class, suburban context. The comedy in Gugino’s character arises from the tension between how clear it is the obsessive adherence to this fantasy isn’t fulfilling for her, and the urgency of her insistence it's standards be met and respected anyway. She fetishizes the order they present, but hasn’t put much consideration into whether that order is fulfilling for her, making her a neurotic version of the classic evil stepmother. Gugino is very good, as usual, and with not much screen time gets across that her character is someone trying to force Liza into living within those standards, not because she believes they are the best options, but because she can't stomach the idea that someone in proximity to her would be allowed to escape them, after she's spent her life suffocating within them.
Lisa Frankenstein is uneven at points, but it deserves a better reception than it's gotten, if for nothing other than its performances and Diablo Cody’s penchant for engaging, and then subverting or re-contextualizing genre tropes. Lisa Frankenstein recognizes the messy processes that are both grieving and maturing. It gives Lisa the room to be less than perfect, without minimizing her wrongs. Even as it’s wrapped in the garb of an eighties teen comedy, it subverts the tropes of that sub genre by doing away with the simple binaries those films tended to work in. Very few eighties teen comedies were this interested (and maybe even more interested) in the relationships between the women in the film, as they were in romantic sub plots. Cody ties these together with some classic horror tropes to create something light, but interesting and new.
Written and directed by Caroline Lindy, Your Monster, stars Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey. It's the story of a young woman embracing rage she’s been refusing to acknowledge, in the form of a very Beast-esque (as in Beauty and the Beast) Monster that’s been hiding in her closet. Where Lisa Frankenstein was dabbling in the cinematic language of the teen comedies of the eighties, Your Monster takes it’s cues from the long history of screwball comedies, classic Hollywood rom-coms and fairy tales. Laura Franco (Barrera) has survived a cancer diagnosis, followed by surgery. Her longtime boyfriend broke up with her as she lay recovering in her hospital bed, saying it was all too much for him to deal with. Over the course of the film, we find out Laura has spent the majority of her life being a doormat to the people in her life, including this ex.
Caroline Lindy manages to take the fairy tale/fantasy roots and channel them into a new feminine rage fantasy. This is not a film about seduction. It's not a film about finding the "right" partner who brings out all the hidden beauty or capability in the protagonist. It’s a matter of Monster treating Laura as a person who is worth and deserves more than the treatment she has been too willing to excuse from those who have taken advantage of her inability to recognize and embrace her worth. It creates a metaphor recognizing feminine rage at gender norms of female subservience and expectations of caretaking as rational and logical, in the holistic sense. Laura's rage isn't new. It's been suppressed. It's a part of her she has been denying. Your Monster is assailing the ways women are so often expected to be passive and servile, positing the ability to express anger as requisite to a healthy self image and healthy relationships. Along with the performances by Barrera and Dewey, the most interesting thing about Your Monster is that it culminates in the destruction of the norm as the fulfillment of that fantasy. It’s an unapologetic embrace of that rage, and a variety of fantasy rare to see with a female lead.
Like Your Monster, The Substance, and Apartment 7A, Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, makes a direct connection between the violence women face in the real world and the entertainment industry. Kendrick pulls double duty, directing and starring as a woman who has been living the indignity of being an aspiring actress in 1970s Hollywood, before scoring an appearance on the then popular game show, The Dating Game. The problem is, one of the three contestants she’s supposed to choose from is a serial killer. Among the more troubling aspects of this story, is that there is indeed truth to it. Serial killer Rodney Alcala did make an appearance on The Dating Game and was chosen by the female contest charged with sifting through the three male contestants for a prospective dream date.
Kendrick displays a deft understanding of narrative, evoking and building a sense of unease and dread. The film opens by demonstrating who Alcala was, and the kinds of methods he used to be able to manipulate women. We're introduced to Kendrick's character (Sheryl) as she sits across a table from two men speaking about her in crude terms, as if she weren't sitting across the table from them. From the start, we as the viewer are put in the uneasy, uncomfortable position of connecting the kind of “everyday” misogyny of seventies Hollywood to the variety of misogyny we deem monstrous. Part of the film’s effect is this cutting back and forth between what Sheryl (Kendrick) is experiencing, and Alcala’s history of violence. We go from the various experiences with sexism Sheryl is having in the days prior to and during the Dating Game appearance, into segments showing some of Alcala’s crimes. Daniel Zavatto gives a chilling performance as Alcala, and one of the more disturbing aspects of the film is the way Alcala leans on and uses social conventions of politeness and nicety.
Part of what distinguishes Kendrick's perspective and direction is her ability to convey the horror of Alcala's crimes, without falling into the trap of ever feeling like sensationalism and exploitation. There's nothing titillating about the way Kendrick's character or Alcala's victims are treated. Instead, it all evokes a queasy sense of the lasciviousness. It all feels like we're seeing things which shouldn't be seen, shouldn't be so sharply brought into focus. It's all the things we try not to see.
Woman of the Hour is an interesting entry in the serial killer sub genre too, because Kendrick is only interested in Alcala by proxy. This isn't an example of paying lip service to the idea of putting the victims at the center. It also differs in portraying how this enables everything from the mundanity of everyday sexism to the serial murders Alcala is committing. He doesn't have the kind of movie star charisma we too often see attributed to serial killers. He's fumbling at the attempt, frequently cringe worthy in his desperate reach for it, and but he is still able to manipulate the ingrained desire of his victims not to offend, to be liked and valued. Like Laura in Your Monster, Sheryl’s impassivity grows throughout the film, though for her it's the internal compounding of frustration with the sexism she experiences. Alcala’s reaction to the slightest signs of it, and Sheryl’s refusal to back down from it, enable her to recognize him as dangerous.
That brings us to what is possibly the scariest film of the year, Oddity, written and directed by Damian McCarthy. McCarthy is an Irish filmmaker, and male. Yet, Oddity has a deep streak of blistering feminine rage. His first film, Caveat, established McCarthy as a talent to watch, as it demonstrated a clear understanding of the mechanics of building suspense and dread, while also being able to tell a compelling story and deliver a good jump scare. Oddity demonstrates a refinement of those skills, into something simultaneously timely and timeless. It’s story, revolving around the death of a psychiatrist’s wife and her twin sister's attempt to cope with it, as a specialist in the occult. It’s a film that feels like an adaptation of a Victorian era gothic short story or novel, which itself would have been based on a folk tale. It’s drawing on the rich history of the genre.
By dipping into the history of the genre, the things that have shaped what it’s become today, McCarthy comes up with a cup full of feminine rage. It only took a familiarity with the genre and some of it’s most potent history and archetypes. The central plot feels so timeless because to our collective detriment, it’s been relevant for most of recorded history. Even as Oddity fits right in with this year’s themes of feminine rage, it demonstrates the only thing new under the sun is characters in fiction that are women being given the agency and autonomy to express that rage.
In the weeks after the results were tabulated and the Tang tinged, 8-bit Mussolini emulator was declared the victor in November, it became apparent young male voters were a key demographic in making that reality. Some of the “big brains” in the industries of political consultation and the columnist/pundit/commentator class revived a narrative they’ve been trying to make happen (like fetch, but misogynist). They've declared an “epidemic of male loneliness,” as explanation for young men were turning to far right and “manosphere” influencers for respite as the fault of feminism and women honestly expressing their negative experiences with sexism and misogyny.
It doesn’t escape me that, simultaneously, a narrative has arisen claiming that the central reason we’re experiencing the current severity of political division is that we’re not listening to each other. I agree. I do firmly believe our divisions are the result of failing to hear each other. I have further questions though. I'm not really satisfied with that blanket declaration. Fortunately or unfortunately, curiosity always demands I ask further questions. It's seemed to me, one of the positives about the digital revolution is that it's allowed women of every class status, every conceivable racial or ethnic background to express their experiences with sexism and misogyny, find support and common ground online, with far less gatekeeping. It also seems irresponsible to refer to any kind of "backlash" to this as anything other than an attempt to re-establish old gates or create new ones.
It gets tricky and complicated though, doesn't it?
Isn't listening to women's experiences and their perspectives on those part of the "woke mind virus"? Isn't "cancel culture" just the result of listening to women? I'm not exactly sure how we're supposed to listen to each other, while taking seriously the people who have little to say other than claiming listening to women or Black people or queer people (or insert whichever marginalized population you choose) is the actual problem. Personally, I've never been able to square that we claim to believe the best way to make collective decisions is to listen to all of the evidence, and search out the best arguments for how to solve our problems based on the evidence, but simultaneously we can't listen to a bunch of different populations because they're speaking about conditions that effect them, and that renders them somehow unable to be objective. We don't take that attitude when it comes to rich people, and their feelings about taxes. Women are a significant portion of the people who are part of the nation and culture, this is a compelling reason to listen to what they're saying about their experiences in the nation and culture, if you believe in things like social and national stability. To say I'm developing doubts about how much we collectively believe in those, is an understatement.
It hasn’t just been the tens of millions of random women expressing those experiences on social media, in columns, books and blogs either. Extremism researchers, academic researchers as well as advocates and organizers across a number of different fields have been sounding the alarm bells about a growing industry dedicated to radicalizing young men, as well as the success that industry was achieving, for at least a decade now. To claim there is a “male loneliness epidemic” is to erase all of this evidence. There is a cottage industry built to manipulate and then exacerbate already existent sexism into weaponized misogyny, for personal profit in some cases and political gain in others. In thinking about this, I can't escape the spurious connection in hysterectomy and hysteria having the same root, and why. The reason for that connection produced no good results, nor is it based in anything we’d call logical or rational now. The same thinking is what produces people talking about a “male loneliness epidemic” in this context.
It’s clear nobody with either the power or inclination to do anything about it has been listening to what these academics and researchers specializing in extremism have had to say about the targeting of young men. It shouldn’t escape notice here that to ignore this demonstrates not just a lack of interest in women’s safety and ability to participate in society autonomously, radicalization is something we generally recognize as not good for the person radicalized either. There’s also a demonstration of lack of interest or care for the well being of young men when this is ignored.
Instead of finding gender norms, particularly masculinity and heteronormativity as related to it, as being harmful to these young men in making them incapable of developing the intimate relationships necessary to eradicate this "epidemic" or looking at the structural conditions which have erased the communal spaces young men would have found more positive engagement in their communities, it's instead leaning into sexism and misogyny to find fault in women for expressing their negative experiences with these same things.
I look at this and it inspires a complicated mix of feelings. Sadness. Disappointment. Frustration. All of those mix with something like churning well of pity and disgust. Pity, for what we all lose daily and annually. Disgust. at how there seems to be more willingness to fight anything which might improve these conditions, and what it demonstrates about us to treat half the population as if they aren't fully human.
There is some hope to be found though too. A number of these films were among the most successful and most talked about films of the year. Horror fans are at least willing to engage with this many feminine rage films. There hasn’t been a significant or substantive reactionary pushback within the horror audience online. There are certainly pockets of it, but unlike other genres, it's is nowhere near large enough or well organized enough to make a difference in what is getting made. Additionally, the films have been taken on their individual merits, by audiences and critics. It’s a sign that the genre is continuing to be healthy and relevant in ways audiences don’t seem to find other genres right now.
I also take hope from the amount of talent that’s gone into making them, that the people involved chose to make them, and that we’ve gotten so many of them. It’s meant great work for and from women in all different stages in their careers, in front of and behind the camera. I’m in awe of the creativity with which this rage is being expressed, and I find few things as life affirming as our collective desire to tell our stories, including when they’re ferocious, feral expressions of justified rage. I enjoy rooting for artists and this year gave me new artists to follow and whose work I can look forward to, as well as expanding the respect I had for artists who were already familiar to me.
I'm not a fool. Only the rarest film or novel is going to come along and create openness to listen where it hasn't been on any real scale. I do think that the stories we tell are important this way, in aggregate. They help us establish new understanding of changing social norms, when added together.
Maybe, this year, when the columnists and commentators get back on the subjects of “listening to each other” or “the male loneliness epidemic” we can point them to the banner year in feminine rage horror that was 2024, and tell them to listen up, because women have been telling us what the problems are for a while, and now that they’re getting more chances, they’re splashing them across the big screen, in all that gaudy, crass, angry and gory glory that is so much of the horror tradition.